Its so important to me to find ways that we can all contribute to our community.

This video series features interviews with leaders from Texas, and the nonpartisan issues that CONNECT us rather than divide us.

The first video is up on YouTube now and the full transcript is available below.

You will notice I bring up some tough, emotional stories from what I have personally have experienced living in Texas as well as other business owners and leaders like me.

And of course I also insert some lighter conversation where we chat about, my favorite fun topic, backyard chickens.

Full Transcript Below:

So nice to see you. Let me know if my music is too loud. I always have to have a little bit of background music to just make sure that I’m still having a good time even though I’m on Zoom like 24 hours a day now it feels.

I don’t hear any music. What are you listening to?  

Oh ok good! Yeah, Spotify has this “happy hits” playlist and it’s like my go-to for the afternoon slump.  Like right after 4, I get really sleepy

Yeah

So I need to get pumped up and ready to go. 

Well, I’m a Pandora girl so I have all my playlists too.

I was a Pandora girl and my sister converted me a couple months ago… and I haven’t gone back so.. We’ll see!  

Okay.

I’ll check in with you in 12 months and’ we’ll see where you are at. 

[laughter]

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. What are you up to today? 

Man, I, um earlier today I was celebrating my son’s 10th birthday. We went out and got to go to a friend’s Ranch and just hang out there and feed some giraffes and see all kinds of animals.  And so we just got to hang out and be out in the wild for a little while.  It was so nice.

So nice. Get out of suburbia. I love that. 

Well I had a photoshoot earlier today. I have a photo studio in Downtown Plano. 

Mhmm

And I was photographing a mutual friend… Julie Holmer! You know Julie! 

Yeah!

My studio focuses on photos of women leaders,  people running for office, business owners, philanthropists, so I spent the morning with her. And then I came home. yesterday was my husband’s birthday

Oh cool! 

So we were still celebrating that. He makes me watch a lot of Marvel. 

[laughter]

Where is your studio?  

I’m right on 15th Street. In the historic downtown area. 

And I know you and I, we recently became Facebook friends because we have a couple friends and common. I think Chris Downs and Shannon Kmak?

Yes. Uh-huh… and so how do you know them ?

Um.. so Chris and I…actually Shannon, and Chris and I are all in Junior League together. 

Okay

I met Chris my very first year when I sat with her and then Shannon I think I met right after. Like the next year. But they are both so involved in the community.

Mhm

And I saw that Angie Sifferman is a mutual friend…

Yes!

and I love Angie. So we’ve got a couple.

Oh yeah there’s a lot of great Junior League people. Junior League is a great organization that makes such a positive difference in our community 

Yeah!

I know Shannon and I met through Leadership Plano.  We went through Leadership Plano together. 

Oh yeah. Ok thats awesome. And now she’s leading Leadership Plano right? 

Yes she was helping lead it. I’m not sure if she still is. but she definitely was and she did a great job with that.

Do you know Carole Greisdorf as well? 

Mhmm. Yes!

Oh I love Carole!  

Well that’s how I met her, was through Leadership Plano as well. 

What a small world.But yeah I think Plano 

one of the things I love Plano is how many women just roll up their sleeves and do things like PTA 

and join clubs… and that’s not,  I think we take for granted that not every city is like that.

Well,  

you know that’s what makes communities work and thrive. Its everybody finding a way to give back.  You know everybody has a million things to do. Everybody has a reason why they can’t give back but when everybody finds the place that they can,  that’s really what makes our city successful.  I love hearing about other women and young girls… I got to speak with a girl scouts troop a couple weeks ago and I just love seeing, you know, the next generation of female leaders rising up and saying “I want to give back to my community”

My parents instilled to me at a young age that you give back when and where you can and so you know I was blessed to have lived in Plano all my life and a lot of the people in Plano invested into me and helped me to get where I am and so I just felt like it’s my turn. I’ve got to give back to the city.

I love that! And so is public office the way that you are a role model for women and girls? And are you a member of any other group? 

Well, I think public office is one of the ways… I guess most visible,  but I think that honestly the way that you’re mostly a role model is more by the actions people see you take, right? the character that you have, and so I try to give back in in lots of ways. Even years before I started serving in public office I was serving on the Plano Balloon Festival Board or Parks and Recreation Board or different nonprofits like that. 

I’m very involved in my local church where even last week I spoke to the women in the women’s group. I serve in the children’s ministry and I’m involved in the PTA at my kid’s school so I like to get back wherever there’s an opportunity to give back. And so I’ve been doing that for years whether it was at SMU where I graduated and then I became a mentor to, you know, new students coming in.  I just think it’s important to, wherever you can find a place that, if you have been blessed with some sort of Talent OR ability that you share that with others and give back.

I love that! I was listening to the Michelle Obama podcast and she interviewed the girls that she mentored but then she interviewed the woman that mentored her, as well, in Chicago. And I just thought… “That’s so cool”. I am a big advocate for mentorship as well so I love that we have that in common too. 

Yeah!

As Plano continues to become more and more diverse, are there programs that city council or that you’ve worked on that have helped maybe our African American population, or we have such a huge Asian population , are there specific programs that these groups can take advantage of? 

Yeah you know I think one group, you know when you’re on City Council you get to be appointed to different boards and commissions. And one of the ones that I’ve had the opportunity to serve on as a liaison is the Multicultural and Outreach Roundtable and this is a group of people that comes together really to promote that diversity and bring people of different cultures and backgrounds into our City. They actually oversee the International Festival every year and unfortunately because of Covid we didn’t get to do it this year. But that is an amazing event every year and I’m really hopeful that we’ll get back to those types of things in the future in some form of fashion and when we do, I really encourage people to go out to the international festival. Because you just see people From all walks of life in Plano that are from various countries and backgrounds. They come and they really have an opportunity to showcase their culture and it’s really neat.

 Also a program called small talk and it is a program through our libraries and this really helps people who English might be their second language. Get together in small groups and practice their English. And so it’s a great way to do that in a friendly atmosphere in, you know, not a threatening way. Then there’s also a program through the library called SNAP and this is really focused on learning programs for  our kids who might have some learning differences maybe autism spectrum disorder or things like that and their programs just to really help make sure that they have programs that really really fit them and so I think those are a couple of programs in our city that really across the board hit some different audiences people might not think of and so I encourage people to check those out. You can find out about all of those on the city’s website. 

I love that! And I think also talking about Role Models, I think it makes a big difference, Kayci,  that people that are holding public office are attending things at the International Festival. I remember, you know, because I was born in Mexico and though I’ve lived here, I grew up in Texas and I went to Plano Senior High School and lived here forever , and I’m an employer,  yet I remember a couple of years ago, somebody in public office said something like “ you know immigrants, you bring all these diseases with you” and it just… It hurts so much to hear all this negative talk about people who moved here because after all we ALL moved here

Right

Some of us more recently than others 

I think I’m very happy to hear that you are on this multicultural Outreach, well that you are a liaison for this program, and is that something that anybody can join?

Yeah! Anybody can attend that and they have monthly meetings and then they have regular events throughout the year and International Festival is their biggest event but that’s not the only event they do. So I encourage more people to get involved in that.  

Some other programs that are available At the library that I thought are really cool are these  things called “bilingual backpacks” that people can check out and it’s like a combination of flashcards DVDs and games and they help support english-as-a-second-language children. And you know our libraries are free…

And their parents 

And the parents, right?!  And then there’s also whats called “Book Packs” Pre-loaded audio devices and printbooks for following… that help you listen to the story and then follow along in the book and this is a great help support for ESL students or even parents who might be working on either literacy or increasing their English skills and so Those are just two great resources that maybe some people don’t know about about in our libraries but I think it’s awesome.  

And then the last program I wanted to mention is called  “UNIDOS”  it’s a program by our Plano Police Department and it serves really as a resource to our Spanish-speaking residents and it’s really, they Meet quarterly, and its really designed just to make sure that our Spanish-speaking residents really have a connection with the police and can get Questions answered and really and really promote the ‘community policing model’ and so that’s another great way for people to get more involved too.

Yeah..I like that.. .And you said you grew up in Plano your whole life?? 

 Yes I was born and raised in Plano

Let’s talk a little bit about that. You know Plano has changed so much in the last couple years and I remember, you know, just driving down where Haggard Farm used to,  when those houses didn’t used to be there and it was just so much more farmland. And how nice it was. You know my studio is on the east side of town and I live on the west side of town and how beautiful it was to drive down there and see some farmland and some open-air.  I love that part of our history you know? That the little bit of farming and Texas Lifestyle you know? That little bit of a slower pace versus the Dallas City pace. 

Mhm. 

Yeah I think that’s why a lot of people came to Plano right? They didn’t want the hustle and bustle of the city. But I think you can have one thing I like about Plano is, I feel like you can have the best of both worlds. Right? If you want to live in a very quiet neighborhood like mine you can do that but we also have some pockets of more, you know, mixed-use Urban feeling areas like in Legacy West or in Downtown Plano. And if you want to feel that more sense of Lifestyle you can live there or you can just frequent them for, you know, the fun aspects of events of the dining and things like that and so I think that’s what nice About Plano is we have that mix that people can choose what their preference for for living is. 

Yeah I agree. 

And I think in my studio we photograph a lot of women leaders and so women leaders, we have families. Right? We have husbands and kiddos and parents and aunts & uncles and all that. And I see a lot of families that maybe lived in McKinney and then moved to Plano. Or lived in Anna moved to Plano. Plano moved to Frisco or something like that. Especially now I have a lot of friends who moved out to Frisco and Prosper but they only come back,  some of the rules are different. Like one of the rules which I personally think is a little strange is how all of Collin County,  as I understand it, allows about a backyard chicken but then the City of Plano doesn’t. So When I was looking into “ hey you know maybe I want to expand my garden a little bit and get a chicken or two that can lay some eggs”  I was really surprised to find that there is actually a group of people, Hoping the City of Plano will pass an ordinance to allow Plano to have backyard chickens.  If that group wanted to move in that direction what are some of the things that City Council would have to see? And would you support it? 

Well I think this group has been great. You know that’s where a lot of changes happen in government. Its when groups get together and they organize from the grassroots level and then they start talking to their representatives and then changes get made. And that’s really what I think the power is of local government. It’s how close you get to be. The people that are making decisions are really close to the people that they’re making decisions for. 

I always love it when I get to hear from residents about what they really want from us as leaders. And so we actually talked about this issue last year and I felt like there was a lot of support on Council to move forward with it. I think if you go back and watch the comments from the meeting I think there was a majority of people who are supportive of it. I definitely am supportive of it. I feel like what you said, if our surrounding cities are able to do it, we should be able to do it too. Especially as the “City of Excellence” as we like to call ourselves we can definitely figure this out. Right? But I think the one sticking point that we came to was, our staff really felt like they didn’t have the resources because over the years they had, back in 2008 when we had a recession and things like that, the animal services department had to take some cuts and so they haven’t gotten back up to the levels that maybe they need be at to add another program. And so I think some of us felt like, well if we’re going to add a new program let’s do it right you know? Let’s make sure that our staff we’re not overburdening them. That we can provide them with the resources they need. They need to have the correct things you know whether it be the chicken coops or other things like that. They need to be able to have those resources. We definitely want them to be able to have a successful program so with covid we’ve definitely taken somewhat of a hit Financially from the City. And we don’t know if that’s going to continue this next year. Thankfully it hasn’t been as bad as anticipated. But we have taken a hit and so I think the council felt like maybe this wasn’t the best time because we were under a hiring freeze to be adding a new position to the program. But we did say that we would bring it back up and When we discuss our next budget, which will be around August, I think that you’ll see that there’s, at least with the current council members, obviously we have an election coming up so I don’t know what the council will look like, but the council members that  discussed it, I think there was enough support to get that program going.

Yeah, and I think business owners and Residents like me are hoping that, together with volunteer efforts and maybe donations from businesses like mine we can help maybe offset some of that cost that might come to the city if that’s a barrier. but that’s probably something more to discuss with the group.

Yeah

And then come back prepared and speak to the council. 

But I just really wanted to reach out and get to know you a little bit more and learn about where you stand on things. It is a pleasure to work with somebody, and to know somebody who is in this nonpartisan role that’s just helping ALL of the citizens of Plano you know? That’s really important to me as a person. That everybody in Plano, regardless of their background, feels like they’re a part of the community and are a WELCOME part of the community. And I I just want to thank you, because I watch you and I do see that you do a good job of doing that so thank you very much.

Well Thank you it’s an honor to serve. And I’m in this for one reason and that’s just because I love Plano and the people of Plano. So I hope I have the opportunity to continue to serve you guys because it really is an honor to do that. So anybody can feel free to reach out to me anytime. I can be reached by email at JP@PrinceForPlano.com and you can learn more about what I’m passionate about and want to do in my next term at PrinceForPlano.com

Thank you Kayci!  

All right thank you so much I appreciate talking to you.

Talk to you soon! 

Ok Bye